The original track by Bill Hennessy was intended as a backing track for a vocalist who never did anything with it. I found the track, liked it and added an orchestra.

The original track only had the generic name of “Piano Ballad3”. Prompted by Bill to come up with a new name, I tried to think about what words might describe the feeling in the music. To me the song feels a little sad and wistful at times while also conveying a sense of hope. I came up with the name “Better Days”. The title could mean, longing for better days from the past and/or looking forward to better days in the future.

In a marathon video session, broken into 2 parts lasting over 15.5 hours, (Yes that’s right. Part one is over 11 hours) Mike Verta critiques works of music submitted by various amateur composers (like us) and offers tips on how to improve them. Over the course of the long video, the same problems are found in many of the musical pieces. I recommend watching the video, (yes the entire 15.5+ hours but not all in one sitting) to really drive home the tips he offers. The tips that stand out the most to me, have been summarized below:

Don’t expect the listener to focus on more than 2 things at a time. If your music is too busy, the listener will be lost.

Establish a pattern that the listener can lock on to. This requires something to be played at least twice.

Don’t abandon an idea too soon. Develop an idea. Change the accompaniment, change the harmonization, change the instruments (often referred to as changing the colour).

At the same time, be wary of too much vertical development or horizontal development. Both are important but in the right proportion. Vertical development refers to changing/adding instruments to the same melody. Horizontal development refers to modifying a melody/rhythm, or changing and developing an idea.

When moving forward with developing an idea, only change one thing at a time. Change just the rhythm or just the melody or just the accompaniment or just the colour.

When transitioning from one section to another (from an A section to a B section or verse to chorus) keep a common thread between the two so it’s clear they are related otherwise is will sound like a completely unrelated piece of music.

If you start your introduction with the focus on what will become the accompaniment, perhaps you start with just chords or an ostinato pattern, when the melody is laid over top of the accompaniment, decrease the volume of the accompaniment. The listener will still hear it because they are familiar with it and they will know that their focus should be shifted to the new music that was just added.

Don’t use more instruments than you truly need. To paraphrase Mike Verta “no colour is as clear as a solo instrument”.

Beware of the trap of over orchestration. You will have listened to your music for hours while working on it and what has become a boring 8 bars that needs more instruments to keep it sounding fresh to you, is new and fresh to a first time listener without any extra instruments and will sound muddy and confusing to a new listener if too many instruments are added.

Keep your melody and accompaniment in different registers (or at least very different tone colours). If your melody is focused around middle C, keep your accompaniment an octave higher or lower, especially if the accompaniment is similar in colour to the melody.

Never forget that your MIDI mockup is supposed to sound like real people are playing real instruments. Real brass and woodwind players need to breathe. Real string players can’t play really fast ostinato patterns forever.

Be aware of the relative power of each instrument. A solo flute will not be heard over a loud brass chord. Sure, you can turn up the fader to make the flute louder but it won’t sound realistic.

Well, that’s what I remember at the moment from watching the video below (and other videos from Mike Verta). Take your time, watch the whole video and it could make your music better.

If you are interested in some free advice on how to make your lyrics, music, song writing, mixing better, consider visiting one of the links below. They are all free forums where you can post your song and or lyrics and have other songwriters listen and offer their opinion. All you have to do is return the favour. Listen to their songs and offer your opinion.

Friends and family will mostly say nice things about your music and they may or may not know the difference between a good song and a song that has room for improvement. For honest, informed opinions, these forums are the place to go. I’ve spent most of my time at the first link below, but I’ve had songs reviewed at the others as well.

I strongly recommend reading the above post and watching that video first. With just the few counterpoint rules demonstrated, the above video will take you pretty far. The following 2 videos take things even further and discusses the rules for other intervals besides just 3rds and 6ths.The addition rules discussed below, are summarized as follows but will make more sense after watching the video.

First we need to define some terms

IC – Imperfect Consonances : 3rds and 6ths, major and minor

PC – Perfect Consonances : unison, 5ths, octaves

D – Dissonances : 2nds, 4ths, 7ths

The counterpoint rules for the above groups of intervals are:

1. You can arrive at an Imperfect Consonance (IC) by way of any other interval

In other words you can arrive at a 3rd or 6th by any other preceding interval.

2. You can only arrive at a Perfect Consonance by way of an imperfect consonance

IC (3rd, 6th) -> PC (unison, 5th, octave)

In other words you can only arrive at a Unison, 5th or Octave, by way of a 3rd or 6th.

3. You can only arrive at a Dissonance by an Imperfect Consonance.

IC (3rd, 6th) -> D (2nd, 4th, 7th)

In other words, you can only arrive at a 2nd, 4th or 7th by way of a preceding 3rd or 6th.

Basically, 3rd and 6th are like wild cards. They can do anything. They can follow or precede any other interval. All other intervals must be preceded by and lead to a 3rd or a 6th.

The above refers to harmonic intervals, both notes playing at the same time. For melodic intervals where notes play consecutively, only the augmented 4th and 7th intervals are considered dissonant.For a more complete explanation of the above summary, see the 2 videos below:

When I first heard this song, I really liked the lyrics. It was just vocals and Ukulele originally so I decided to add guitar, bass and drums to finish the song and give it a more standard instrumentation.

This started out with a couple of electric guitars, a couple of synths and a drum track. In the repeating chord progression of the original music I heard a few things that gave me a lot of ideas for a melody and orchestral accompaniment so I added all those original ideas and more to this instrumental. Except for the above mentioned instruments from the original version, all the orchestra sounds are from my Virtual Playing Orchestra sound library, including the not yet released dynamic cross faded brass patches.

The rules of counterpoint have been developed to instruct a composer on how to create a counter melody that can be independent yet still blend harmonically with the main melody.

The video below demonstrates the steps to composing with nothing more than the most basic understanding of music theory and counterpoint. All you need to know is what notes are in a chord, what notes belong to the scale in the key of your chord progression, how to choose a chord inversion so that one chord more easily flows into the next and 2 very simple and basic counterpoint rules. That’s it.

For choosing chord inversions, what I mean is that if you are playing a C chord “C-E-G” and you wish to move to an F chord, instead of playing C-E-G and then F-A-C, you are better off playing C-E-G and then C-F-A, because this represents less movement. Instead of all notes moving up by 4 notes, one note stays the same and the rest only move up by one note. This is referred to as good voice leading.

So, the steps from the video below are as follows:

Start with a chord progression One chord per bar. You could use C F Am G C for example – though that’s not what was used in the video. It’s just a nice easy chord progression

Create a half tone melody using chord tones from whatever chord is being played in that bar. If you are playing a “C” chord, your chord tone melody can use “C”, “E” or “G” since those are the notes that make up a “C” chord

Replace some half tone notes with shorter notes to move from one half tone melody note to another, usually by playing a fragment of a scale moving up or down towards the next melody note

Add a half tone harmony (which will become the counter melody) to the existing main melody you already have from step 3. To do this, choose a note that is a 3rd or 6th below the melody tone. Other intervals can be used but this requires a slightly more advanced knowledge of counterpoint which provides guidance on which intervals can follow and precede other intervals (see my follow up post about counterpoint). 3rd and 6ths can always follow and precede each other so for now, it’s simplest to stick with 3rds and 6ths. Note that steps 3 and 4 can also be done in the opposite order.

Repeat step 3 for the harmony, with this rule in mind: generally, when the melody is holding a note, the counter melody should be moving. When the melody is moving, the counter melody should be holding a note. So for example, if the melody is playing a half note, perhaps the counter melody could be playing quarter or eighth notes using either chord tones or part of a scale.

Between 4:18 and 18:26 is a good example of easily using just the basics of music theory and counterpoint as described above. (I’ve already set the video to start at 4:18)